Secret Smells

Okay…I took Carmine out for a walk this afternoon so he could do what dogs do when you take them out. He’s a healthy dog so, like most healthy mammals, his elimination is pretty normal-smelling (given that it is, uh, poop – (wow…You know, when I first started thinking about this post, I figured writing the intro would be a breeze. Uh…I ..well, forging ahead here)

Don’t puke yet – we’re not going to stick with the dog-poop angle for much longer. I’m hoping to segue into Weird Smells We Like; re this poop: the first 3 seconds of bready/yeasty smell should’ve been disgusting, right? Instead it was vaguely….interesting. Then it turned “appropriately’ disgusting. But that initial reaction was not something I was prepared for – even as a card-carrying Smell Freak.

…..so why am I grossing you guys out with this? Well, a few weeks ago Angela over at Now Smell This did a post on Smell Fetishes, those slightly tilted aromas that captivate us – and the comments that followed were fascinating – and very comforting. Turns out that what I always thought was just Sheer Weirdness on my part is, in fact, pretty banal. One of mine is the fleshy part of the knee, when it is bent and I would’ve gone to my grave with that little secret, had it not been that at least 4 other people commented on that very thing (and I think we’ve discussed knees here before – I probably blocked it out. 1960s Childhood trauma, I’m sure). Another is the smell of an uncropped dog’s ear, where it just joins the head. It’s this warm, waxy, slightly oily, cheesy smell. I never get the dog paw/Frito connection – but that ear join could give a Cheeto a run for its money.

Google groans under the weight of sites on armpit-love. Butts are big. Feet…I could walk from LA to Hilo to Tokyo on the list of sites without getting my own feet wet. Non-body perfumistas cop to asphalt a lot. And gasoline (though that’s a no-brainer. Anybody who loves Mitsouko after 1990 has to love gasoline). My herpetologist pal is addicted to the smell of newly sloughed-off snakeskin (warm, right off the snake – she has about 20 pythons, the weirdo, so she orta know). I had a moldy carpet that smelled exactly like puppy-breath and even though I knew it was likely to give me plague…I loved catching that quick whiff of baby dog breath (is there any sweeter animal smell in the world?) The list of unconventional smell-loves is HUGE! With the advent of the Internet (and it’s relative anonymity), lots of folks are ‘coming out’ with their love of smells. Back in my youth, in the Jurassic Era, you got beat down BAD if you were the booger-eatin’ Urkle who sniffed weird stuff or ate library paste – and then threw it up all over the floor. Now that’s an early-60s scent memory from Hell. The Urkle. The paste. The puke. The sawdust (and the really disgusted janitor). And the nuns would never let you change seats, even if the Urkle threw up in the aisle next to your desk.

But I was a little weirded-out by the breadypoop thing– then I realized the initial smell is replicated in the first blast of Bois Farine and (Lord, I’m gonna get a beatdown for this one)..En Passant. And Cheerios! It only lasts a second but there is this warm, fecund, internal smell that doesn’t even smell fecal – more elemental – and having little to do with the actual poop. I know Secretions Magnifique worked hard to be the Bad Dog, with it’s bloody knife, etc…but in that first blast, En Passant is more ‘real’, more deeply organic than that poseur SM could ever hope to be. I’m not a total freak…right? 12 years of 50s-60s Catholic school can make you doubt yourself.

But let’s get back to the SMELLS! My list is long and weird, but I shared a few of them with you (in the 60s,whole classrooms were cracked-out on purple ditto ink -yeah, baby!).

Do you have any unusual smell-loves? Don’t be shy. After all, we are people who pay Good Money for perfumes made with cat-butt, whale poop and blue cheese . Do any of those smell translate in perfumery? M. Malle is probably sending the ninjas over here as I type this..(am I crazy with the En Passant? For reals. You can tell me. I can take it.)

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Well, I had to keep my stomach contents from rising up while reading this. But what I’m about to say may make other people nauseated, too. I liked the smell of my babies’ poop while they were nursing. That’s something only a mother could love, I realize. :d

E, I’ve heard that compared to hot buttered popcorn, and I don’t know whether it’s just that I eat a lot of popcorn, or whether it’s the (forgive me) processed fats connection, but for the first six months of my little guy’s life, yep, buttered popcorn. He’s on solids and much more stinky the last two months.

That’s a pretty good analogy – I can’t actually remember how it smells anymore, but it doesn’t smell bad, just interesting. But after the first bite of real food, yechh. But it’s still better than puke, at any age.

Totally with you on the baby-poop thing, stipulating it’s only when breastfed (not formula) and before any other foods are introduced. That poop smells totally inoffensive, by which I mean it doesn’t even smell like poop, more like the yeasty smell of bread rising.

…. and it’s not even 9am yet, who’s puking? Speaking of a smell I really, REALLY HATE.

Also I went to a lecture yesterday morning and I thought I would have to leave — room smelled like a fridge full of sour milk. Spent an hour breathing through my mouth. Also unlike everyone else I hate the smell of gasoline and diesel/jet fuel smells (like on a bus/in an airplane), all of which give me terrible headaches.

I like a little bit of stink. That funky gym smell. There, I said it. Feet, not so much, but sweat? Bring it on. It’s got to be pretty unwashed to put me off.

There have been several good research studies that show the most erotic smell for most women is male sweat! Clean male sweat, that is. It also helps with depression and low libido. So, feeling down, off to the gym or boxing/martial arts dojo! heh heh

Asphalt for sure. Horse apples. Fresh cow manure in the spring, silage in the silo, newly laid eggs, leather, as in saddleand bridle, and cow breath (can you tell I grew up on a farm?)
Thanks for asking!

Lessee-the way my sheets smell the day I change them (which is once a week)-assorted perfume smells, warm cotton, a bit of “me”, a bit of cat warmth.

Galoshes. Anyone remember them?

Rubber cement in the metal container. If you recall, the container is always cold to the touch and that first whiff when the cap comes off? Heaven! I never went on whiffing, though. Once an opening is enough.

Ooooh yes, the natural turpentine from trees, by far my favorite solvent! Copal and linseed are also strong and lovely smells from Art School (and later painting years) too – I am always reminded of being in the painting stacks when I spray on ‘Daphne’.

That’s one of those ‘hate to love it’ smells for me. I know persackly what you mean, though. Skunk = Spring around our parts. And for reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom, skunk reminds me of violets, for just a mo’…

Skunk smell will always remind me of L.A. They live all over the city — I think they forage in garbage dumpsters — and aren’t too smart about crossing the street. Releasing the scent is usually the last thing the skunk ever does. When driving around at night, especially in the canyons, you pass through veils of skunk smell. I never thought it would be pleasant, but when I go back there on visits now, it smells great to me.

Olfacta – I live in one of those canyons! My dog has been skunked from inches away more than once. The smell up close and personal will close your eyes and throat — BUT, I love the smell from far away, when it just wafts through the air.

I also like the smell of manure, which reminds me of long car rides upstate. And the smell of loam – perfectly balanced soil.

Wow Musette, I have really been considering this topic a lot lately! Especially the animal feet thing…they all have a smell that is quite unique, and must be part of their territory-marking and tracking abilities.
Even the icky thrushy thing of horses’ feet is there for that reason I read somewhere.
Most smells I can ‘deal’ with OK, with some interested ‘distance’. I suppose I’d ‘ick’ the human excrement variety…but I’ve always loved petroleum types, the whiff of kerosene smoke for instance.

I remember reading somewhere that smelling our elimination helps the actual process (I’m sure I’m screwing that up but it’s something like that. (I tried to find the reference for this post – you should’ve seen what popped up b-( It’s why dogs frequently smell other poop just prior to pooping themselves. I’m not big on poop (I’m the one who picks up after the dogs, cleans the toilets, etc – corprophagia is NOT in my love-lexicon) which is why I was so surprised by that 2-second yeasty smell being so not-ick.

The only petroleum love I have is for that first blast of later Mitsouko. Actual gas makes me a bit nauseous.

I have this special sleeping bag that belonged to my uncle. It’s Army issue, down, thirty years old, and lived in a garage for much of that time. It’s mummy style,and I sleep under it in the bed of my freezing cold dorm room, with my comforter heaped on top.

The smell after a night of sleeping in it is heavenly. Sort of warm and thick and ‘human’, with a little must and a tinge of my skin lotion.

My first cat’s smell in fall. In the Fall, he’d fine crumbly dried leaves and roll in them on our driveway, which was not paved. Then he’d crawl into my bed and we’d snuggle all night under the covers. That smells like the best and simplest kind of happiness and unconditional love to me.

Fresh paint–my grandfather was a shop teacher and is still a talented handiman and mechanic, so I associate the smell with him.

Book glue. I worked in a library–happiness of the non cat kind is the stacks of a library.

Your list is magnificent! I’m okay with horse poop (it’s actually way less ‘fecal’ than carnivores’ poop, imo) but am so allergic to nearly everything ‘horse’ that – do you know I cannot associate many horse smells? Once they urinate, I’m outa there (bad asthma reaction – BAD) and we all know how often they do that!

We have cute little ferret-like creatures in the Alps that sit in your car engine and chew the wires- they are called marders. What a smell their musk has, like a skunk’s but more bearable. And cow manure, yeah, grew up with that one! And sumi ink, yum, I have boxes of incense that smell like that. Now let’s put them all together. Parfum de Ferret-Manure-Ink!

Our marder, which hung around our house for 3 years, was named “Marvin the Muddy”, and he didn’t chew the wires, but he left presents in the engine block, like once, there was a coconut (where did he find that in the Alps??) and another time, a vulture’s claw! They’re kind of like cats that way, they leave presents for their humans. He liked to slide down the back of the car at night, leaving muddy little butt prints and his musky smell all over the car.

:o I had a customer who claimed she craved the smell of skunk when she was pregnant.She said she would drive around at night to try and get her “fix”.

:-?This made me think that maybe one day skunk spray will be used as a perfumery element.
I can just about see it now … In an effort to preserve skunks and still use their musk Scientsts develop a spray collection room in a lab. Lab tech brings in a fat ,fluffy ,contented and unflappable female skunk. Lab tech tries to startle skunk into spraying by going “Boo!!!”
Skunk:Whatever I’m not falling for it . while trundleing over to a sun patch.

Mimeographed (what you called purple ditto, much more evocative) papers. The first thing we’d all do was shove them up to our faces til the nun yelled “Stop that!” I also loved the way dry cleaners used to smell. I think it was some carcinogenic thing they had to get rid of. And the tar smell on the roof of the old building I grew up in. The moms hung laundry and the kids lay in the sun, hence the name “tar beach.” Also the smell of school itself. And I agree, Crayolas from back in the day. The popcorn smell of elaborate old movie palaces.
And for me, in Kent CT, the smell of early spring is a combination of skunk cabbage (skunk lite) and spicebush. It’s not spring yet, here.

No Fun Nuns. They were everywhere. >:p The smell of school was very evocative – back then, it would conjure waves of anxiety. Now it’s an interesting, nostalgic smell. Funny: they all smell the same. I was just in a newish elementary school and – no difference between it and my old school, built in the early 50s.

What did they do to Crayolas? They ruined them when they took out that smell – they also don’t color as well, either :(( (I just spent the weekend with my granddaughter so I’m all up in Crayola’s business right now)

I love these kind of posts! We have just come back from holiday and we spent lots of time outside and swimming ( Center Parcs, for those in the UK) so chlorine is fresh in my mind in the moment but I have loved it since childhood, it was part of the smell of summer when the local pool opened. The smell of damp vegetation that is startingto dry out in early spring sunshine and the smell of children who have been outside playing in the woods.

Also, the fresh from womb smell but I can only speak for my own daughters but mmmm…
Also get the poo when breastfeeding thing too.
Horseradish , gasoline,
A match when you have just blown it out.
Bonfire remnants on leather jackets
Junkyards- happy afternoon hunts with my dad. Tires, gas, oil and dirt
Fresh cut wood – specifically 2×4’s
And the list goes on…

Ah yes, asphalt… and purple ditto. “Eiche” brand paste. Outdoor cats (lavender and hay, yum!). Lovage and sage. Horseradish (glad I’m not alone with this one!). Elderflower. Sweet yeast dough when it has risen. Henna – freshly henna-ed hair is great, but mehndi (aka henna tattoos) are best – I can’t keep my nose from my hands when I get one. I wish somebody would make a henna perfume with all the aspects of it. Henna on hair, on skin, henna flower….

Horse poop, lover’s morning breath (depending on dinner!), Diesel (from my Uni days in France), son’s nasty old mattress, slightly rotten fruits of various kinds, major overdose of Indian spices in sweat, some plastic.

I’m the reverse on the fruits. I like the smell of slightly unripe fruits – greenish bananas 😡 That probably explains my love of those lasery-green frags.

I was in love with a man who smelled like dulce de leche – at least the space just below his ears did (never got much farther than that, alas)….wow, that was such an erotic blast, catching a whiff of that…

Does anyone remember the smell of Barbie doll carrying cases in the 60’s and 70’s? That plastic had the most compelling smell. Very rarely I will find something with that same smell, and it brings me right back to childhood.

Oh, yes, Nancy, what a great smell. Thanks for the scent memory! And thanks, Anita, for a very cool post.
I, too, like the odor of anything horse (coat, hay, tack, even manure), and also the purple ditto ink smell. One year in college as a part-time job, I filled in for a church secretary and had a ball mimeographing the church bulletin!

There was also a line (I don’t remember the brand) of diaries, address books, record cases (for 45’s!), etc. – all in pink vinyl with a pony-tailed girl on the front. That stuff had the same Barbie case plastic smell.

I had one of those. The 45 case. Remember the little discs that fit inside the 45s so you could play them on a regular turntable? Those were very cool (in red and black, if I recall and if you didn’t put them in just right you would either crack them (lots of drama then) or they would go pinging across the room!

Yes! The discs! I had completely forgotten about them. I was (am) the oldest of six and the youngest, as a two-year-old, loved music so much and was so very careful with my records and record player that I actually let him play them! At two he could get that disc in the records!

Brown liquid in a clear bottle indeed! Holy memory Batman! I also loved Bonne Bell Shower 2000- anyone remember that? My mom was devastated when it was discontinued. And now I am reminds if Jovan Eau Fresh- I loved that stuff in my early teens!

Asparagus pee is one of my guilty-little-secret smells. Also I like many of the ones mentioned here, particularly the plasticky, rubbery smell of new Barbies (such a nostalgic scent) and anything related to horses and cows. The smell of a swimming pool, whether indoor or outdoor, is one of the most beautiful smells in the world to me, and since it’s such a clean smell, I somehow don’t think of it as falling under the “secret scents” category (or is it that not everyone likes the smell of chlorine?).

Oh, it doesn’t have to be ‘ick’ to be secret. I just used ‘secret’ to denote stuff we probably don’t share with everyone. El O looks at me strangely enough as it is. I don’t need to share my scent interests with him. ;))

Asparagus pee! That’s one you share with everyone, whether you want to or not, unless you are peeing in total solitude (i.e. in a house by yourself).

Interestingly, not everyone produces “aparagus pee” when they eat asparagus AND, even more interestingly, but perhaps not so surprisingly to perfumistas, not everyone is able to smell it, whether or not they produce it.

I dislike the smell of chlorine because it makes me anxious — it reminds me of getting water up my nose and down my throat when I was a kid learning to swim. Very primal. We didn’t have a pool, so I had to take swimming lessons at a public pool, so my first memories of that smell aren’t very happy.

I can’t help but wonder how many of these strange smells trigger fond memories thus creating an attraction. Myself, I have a fondness for concrete, especially wet. There was a tunnel connecting two buildings I worked in and I spent a lot of time there getting my smellage on. I’ve got it bad for wet, just cleaned cat and wet soil. Wet really brings out the elemental, doesn’t it?

My two biggies have already been mentioned…..chlorine bleach and Vicks Vaporub. But I have two more to add that haven’t yet been mentioned. 1-Garage. I was always Dad and Granddad’s little shadow and I remember sitting on an old three-legged stool while they did ‘man things’ with cars and tools and lawnmowers. I felt like a stowaway in a forbidden kingdom scented with the strange perfume of ‘man’. 2-Murphy’s Oil Soap. The folks who cleaned our church always cleaned the wooden pews with this product. To this day, when I get it out to use on my wood pieces, I feel an air of sanctification. :)

Murphy’s is weird for me, Teri. I like the smell right out of the bottle (ditto on the church-cleaning association) …but sometimes it makes me a bit queasy. I can never tell which way my stomach is going to react…:-s

I’ve noticed the Mississippi smells different, in different places (though it always has a vegetal quality to it). Way north it’s less fecund, more ‘watery’ – the farther south you go, the richer and soupier it gets, smell-wise, which makes perfect sense to me

I’ll cop to being into the smell of metal–copper, steel, silver, iron, they all have a particular odor with varying amounts of what I scientifically call ‘zinginess’. Also, I like the smell of rocks and rock dust.

Brown Salve! 😮 My nose is full of A-1 Salve and sulphur soap now! My mom used to use that (and Borofax – another distinct smell from my childhood) for scrapes and bruises. ) Stuff doesn’t smell like that anymore!

Unlike Mitsouko, I can happily report that Ichthammol is unchanged! They no longer sell it in drug stores (that I can find anyway), but you can buy a huge jar of it from veterinary supply houses for cheap!

The old humidifier that my mom used to put in my room when I was sick — combination of the sound, the cool feeling of the mist and the smell up close were so, so soothing. Wish I could bottle that whole experience.

What an evocative post!
Mine are finished compost, an outdoor whiff of someone else’s cigarette (or weed for that matter) old style super leaded gasoline- my husband says it doesn’t smell as good as when we were kids because they’ve taken so much out of it, and God help me- chemical fertilizer. Actually, what I loved was the miasma of the KMart Garden Center in the 70s. I would go there with my mom and gather lungfuls of that stuff.

And what I wouldn’t give for just one more huff of that purple mimeograph ink.

Scents from childhood are, I think, imprinted on the brain like the first thing a duckling sees.

Mine: The fresh wood shavings we put down for my guinea pigs. The smell of hot pavement mixed with chlorine from our swimsuits when we’d sit on the pavement after leaving the pool. The spearmint that grew on the side of our house. And yes, leaded gasoline.

Yeee-ahh, purple ditto ink! I get ditto ink from Bulgari Black instead of rubber. To me, Bulgari Black is about as kinky as crayons, Elmer’s School Paste or pencil shavings (good smells, all). (Psst…I also like skunk smell–but only from a distance.)

Add me to the list of those who love all horse-related smells. In addition, pencil and cedar shavings, Play-Doh, creosote, dirt, wet sidewalks after a storm, floor wax (the kind they used in your elementary school).

– Creosote. Creosote or pitch oil is the name used for a variety of products that include wood creosote and coal tar creosote. The word is also used to describe the black oily accretion that builds up inside of chimney flues as a result of incomplete burning of wood or coal. In my smell memory banks, it was coal tar creosote used as a wood preservative on the railroad ties of the Munich subway system that seduced me. The smell drifted up from the depths of the subway platforms when my mother and I would descend to them on an escalator, the year we lived as a family on sabbatical in Munich. From what I understand, cresosote contains phenols, which wuld partially explain my attraction to it from a chemical breakdown perspective.

– Orange Bonne Bell Lip Smacker. It’s seventh grade in a tube for me, but it’s also evocative of crushes on boys, endless replays of Bee Gees on vinyl, and the beach. It’s not for everyone, because it’s so violently fake-smelling and tasting; but I have a weakness for it much like people who like Peeps candies love their ersatz marshmallow candy.

– Boxwood. It’s a musty-dusty smell that isn’t off-putting like an old attic; it’s earthy and organic and comforting and nostalgic to me.

– Chrysanthemum. In the same musty-dusty, nostalgic category for me as boxwood, especially the off-white spider mums.

– The smell inside my 21-year-old leather make-up bag. It’s a compilation of ghosts of perfume sample vials, lipsticks, miniature bottles of hand creme, and lipliner. Only years of shlepping make-up in it would lend it that smell with its leather base. It will always be in my purse. I refuse to get rid of it.

Gee, I’ll probably think of 15 more things tonight five minutes before I fall asleep. But for now….well, it’s nostalgic for me to even verbalize how much these scents affect me.

– I’d have to agree with whomever wrote about puppy breath. It’s wonderful, just the purest tangible evidence of growth in a sweet creature that is still in many ways pure. (Okay, that reads way more Mother Teresa than I intended it, but ya’ll know what I’m saying.)

– Biz laundry bleach (“with blueing”) reaches far into my memory banks. I confirmed with my mother that she did our laundry with Biz when I was very small. I find it comforting, much like I do the scent of boxwood.

– The smell of Maggi chicken bouillon cubes. It’s not widely-used in the U.S. and thus is the unexpected, but somehow familiar, alternative to chicken stock smells that are used commercially in the States. For me it’s kind of like having a reminder that Europeans eat chicken soup, too.

– Eucalyptus trees. I will always associate them with moving to Los Angeles and rolling the car windows down on a chilly night, just to inhale their magic.

– 4711 Kölnisch Wasser. It’s Europe in the summer, in a bottle. All-purpose, unisex, generic after-bath splash that is kind of like the Jean Naté of Germany.

– A Japanese incense made by Nippon Kodo, with the unfortunate name of “My Sin”. The scent is no longer manufactured but the last time I smelled it, I was instantly three years old, prowling around the House of Bamboo in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s a blend of woody, masculine, strong earthy smells that convey safety and exoticism and uniqueness…or at least what a three-year-old thought was unique and therefore special.

– The ghost of saffron, the smell left inside the glass jar I use to store smaller glass jars of the spice. I’m always reluctant to wash it because I love the smell of saffron so much. So I like equally letting the smell build up again with the purchase of more saffron.

– The perfect complimentary combination of garlic and artichoke heart baking together on top of a pizza with a tomato sauce base.

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